[4] Same-sex sexual activity was criminalised only briefly in Japan's history between 1872 and 1881, after which a localised version of the Napoleonic Penal Code was adopted with an equal age of consent.

From religious circles, same-sex love spread to the warrior (samurai) class, where it was customary for a boy in the wakashū age category to undergo training in the martial arts by apprenticing to a more experienced adult man.

[38] In February 2015, the ward of Shibuya (in Tokyo) announced plans to establish a partnership system that would recognize same-sex couples for situations such as hospital visits and shared renting of apartments.

This procedure allows couples to get a "proof of partnership" paper, which does not have any weight under Japanese law but can help in, for instance, getting access to a partner who is ill and in hospital but institutions are under no legal obligation to respect the certificates.

[45] Yasuhiko Watanabe, a law professor at Kyoto Sangyo University, stated that if Japan recognizes same-sex marriage, that would impact the whole of Asia, proving that it is allowed not only in Western societies.

[52] On 17 December 2024, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba made the following statement about same-sex marriage during a parliamentary session: “I have met concerned individuals, and I can see that being together is the most precious thing to them.

[54] In December 2022, a "very broad and comprehensive fertility bill" was introduced in Japan - that explicitly and legally only allows heterosexual married women access to IVF treatment.

[57][58][a] As of 2021, sexual orientation and gender identity are not protected by national civil rights laws, which means that LGBTQ Japanese have few legal recourses when faced with discrimination in such areas as employment, education, housing, health care and banking.

However, homosexual and transgender persons can experience physical, sexual and psychological violence at the hands of their opposite-sex or same-sex partners, but receive limited protection from the law.

Same-sex partners are excluded from the Act on the Prevention of Spousal Violence and the Protection of Victims (Japanese: 配偶者からの暴力の防止及び被害者の保護等に関する法律)[b] and generally lack safe places where they can seek help and support.

The law, which took effect in April 2019, also commits the Metropolitan Government to raise awareness of LGBTQ people and "conduct measures needed to make sure human rights values are rooted in all corners of the city".

In January 2018, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare revised the Model Rules of Employment (モデル就業規則)[e] which "stands as the example framework for work regulations", to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and "gender identification".

[70] Article 15 reads:[78] In addition to what are provided for from Article 12 to the preceding paragraph, employees are prohibited from any other forms of harassment at the workplace that are damaging to the work environment of other employees such as by way of speech or behaviour related to sexual orientation or gender identification.In 1991, the group OCCUR (Japan Association for the Lesbian and Gay Movement)[79] filed a court case against the Tokyo government after being barred from using the "Metropolitan House for Youth" the previous year.

[80] In February 2018, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare created provisions addressing discrimination in housing, stating that "consideration must be taken to not deny lodging on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

"[70] In October 2020, The Guardian reported that several Japanese love hotels were denying entry to same-sex couples for the sole reason of their sexual orientation, despite it being illegal under federal law since 2018 as per the guidelines issued by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.

In January 2018, after a high-profile incident in 2015 in which a gay student at Hitotsubashi University died by suicide after being outed against his will, the city of Kunitachi passed an "anti-outing" ordinance to promote understanding of LGBTQ people.

[84][85] In April 2021, the LDP announced it would pass the LGBT Understanding and Enhancement Bill during the 204th National Diet session, set to end in June for the 2020 Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Tokyo.

Two of the majority judges still issued a call for society to "embrace the diversity of sexual identity", also adding that the requirements were invasive and encouraged the National Diet to review them.

Mikiya Nakatsuka, professor of health sciences at Okayama University and president of the Japanese Society of Gender Identity Disorder, stated that most transgender persons in Japan "paid attention when they used toilets at public facilities so they [could] stay out of trouble", and expressed concern that this single case would be applied erroneously to the wider transgender community, creating unwarranted prejudice and discrimination.

[103][104] In October 2023, the Japanese Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the 2003 law requiring sterilization before a change of sex or gender on an individual's family register can be legally made was unconstitutional.

[113] While representations of homosexuals in the Japanese media tend towards caricature on the basis of stereotypes of sexual or behavioral deviance (e.g. the actually straight Hard Gay), there are several examples of transgender and non-binary celebrities in Japan such as Haruna Ai, Kayo Satoh, Ataru Nakamura, Kaba-chan, Hikaru Utada and Ikko.

The education specialist Naoki Ogi (more colloquially known by teachers across Japan by his nickname "Ogimama") has in past years given focus to LGBTQ issues in schools.

[119] One of famous Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda's earliest movies, a documentary called "August without Him", released in 1994, follows Hirata Yutaka, the first openly gay AIDS sufferer in Japan.

[131] However, it also included "promoting understanding of sexual diversity" in its platform, a move that would have been "unthinkable" in earlier times and that lawmaker Gaku Hashimoto attributed in part to burnishing the country's international image in advance of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

[132] In 2019, former Defense Minister Tomomi Inada said she was unsure whether she would be able to introduce new legislation seeking greater tolerance of same-sex relationships amid opposition from her LDP colleagues.

[134] During the country's 2017 general election, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike's newly launched Party of Hope pledged the elimination of LGBTQ discrimination in its manifesto.

[137] In June 2019, the CDP added introducing legislation aimed at ending discrimination against the LGBTQ community and legalising same-sex marriage to their party platforms ahead of the 2019 Japanese House of Councillors election.

Closed meetings held in May to discuss a bill, proposed by opposition parties, ended without agreement after some LDP MPs said the rights of sexual minorities had "gone too far".

An unnamed lawmaker described LGBTQ people as "morally unacceptable", while another MP, Kazuo Yana, said sexual minorities were "resisting the preservation of the species that occurs naturally in biological terms", media reports said.

[139] In July 2022, LGBTQ rights activists and supporters protested in front of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's headquarters after an intra-party panel meeting circulated a booklet claiming that "homosexuality is a mental disease or addiction."